Danger: Corporate Media Toxic

The consequences of being inadequately informed about important matters are great.  They include injury, illness, loss of freedom, loss of property, declines in our living standards, even death.  Without adequate knowledge, we are rendered incapable of constructively contributing to civilized debate and discussion and stripped of the tools necessary to contribute to our democracy, hold our elected officials accountable and assist in the shaping of public policy.  That’s why it’s so important that we know who the corporate big-wigs are who are directly and indirectly responsible for gutting the quality of our news, because in addition to our elected officials, they bear a large part of the responsibility for the serious problems we face on local, state, national and worldwide levels.  

The following is a list of just a few of many subjects we should know more about that have been deemed completely or substantially “off limits” by our corporate-owned media, in addition, of course, to the behind-the-scenes “business of news,” a topic never addressed by the mainstream corporate media:

• How the media in other countries is and has been covering domestic and international news and what citizens abroad have to say about that coverage;

• The number of innocent Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children maimed or killed by U.S. and other allied forces as a result of President Bush’s war declarations and how the resulting death and destruction has impacted survivors’ lives and the reputation of the United States around the world;

• Differing viewpoints critical of U.S. foreign policy, including those that make strong arguments for why our policies, our expanding footprint and our funding of terror around the globe is the real great threat to our national security;

• The income gap between the rich and the poor, its root causes and consequences;

• More information about the advantages to be gained of giving us more freedom and flexibility as to how and where we educate our children, including changing policy to permit us to direct our real estate tax dollars to the school of our choice (public or  private);

• The disparity in force and deaths between Israelis and Palestinians, the construction of Israel’s so-called “security wall” and how this meandering wall and Israeli checkpoints are impacting the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank;

• How people in other industrialized and undeveloped countries live their daily lives;

• The names, faces and backgrounds of all the individuals who control the Federal Reserve Bank (a private bank) and our monetary policy and, thus, greatly influence our nation’s economy;

• More about the “New World Order” as referenced by George Bush Sr. and others;

• More details about the federal deficit, government waste and inefficiencies and consequences for our and future generations;

• Details concerning past and present CIA “black ops” including “extraordinary rendition” activities where individuals are transferred to secret locations abroad for the purpose of extracting information by torture; 

• Ross Perot, and why he really dropped out of the 1992 Presidential race;

• The extent of wiretapping, surveillance and other spying on American citizens on the part of part of federal, state and local government officials and employees;

• A study on the pros/cons of un-consolidating corporate media;

• The domestic and world impact of China’s booming economy, including its appetite for limited resources and unprecedented pollution emmissions;

• The extent of how space has been weaponized, and more details about NASA’s missions, its payloads, its budgets and the cost/benefits of its activities;

• More details about the pros and cons of universal healthcare and how and at what cost such systems function in other countries around the world.

The above items are just the tip of the iceberg of all that we should know and deserve to know if the public airwaves do, in fact, belong to us.  I look forward to delving into some or all of these subjects at a later date, as well as exposing, by name, media executives that bear responsibility for keeping us in the dark.  For now, I’ll close this post with some prophetic words spoken almost fifty years ago as the seeds of irresponsible media greed were beginning to take root.

The following quotes are excerpts of a speech given by Edward R. Murrow at a convention of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) in October 1958, four years after Murrow’s renowned 1954 CBS broadcasts that publicly exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy, the harm he had done to citizens and the danger he posed to democracy and free speech.

“….Our history will be what we make it.  And if there are any historians around fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black-and-white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.  I invite your attention to the television schedules of all three networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m. Eastern Time….If this state of affairs continues….surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive.  I mean the word “survive” literally.”

“….I have said….that we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other.  But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising.  There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies.  But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or the Communications Act which says they must increase their profits each year, lest the Republic collapse….I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; (and) by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation….Unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late….”

“I do not advocate that we turn television into a twenty-seven inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense.  But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live…This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire.  But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.  Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.  There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference.  This weapon of television could be useful….”

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